Red Candle Games can't seem to catch a break with their horror game Devotion. Last year, the game was released on Steam, but was quickly pulled within its launch week, after players found that the game had a poster that compared Xi Jinping--the Chinese president--to Winnie the Pooh. While Red Candle Games stated that the inclusion of the poster was due to a technical issue, the game remains pulled from sale on Steam to this day. Following the incident, Devotion's publisher in China, Indievent, lost its business license, and while a direct reason was never specified outside of "violating relevant laws", it was implied that allowing Devotion to release with the said image included in its files was why.

After being unable to find success on Steam, it seemed that Devotion would be able to release on GOG, as Red Candle Games announced the game for a December 18th launch. However, shortly after said reveal, GOG put out an official statement saying they had decided to refuse Devotion to be listed on their storefront, due to "receiving many messages from gamers". The decision to block the game from sale has garnered backlash, with "fellow indie developer" Glass Bottom Games demanding CD Projekt Red and GOG remove their upcoming title SkateBIRD from the platform.

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[bodefuceta]

GOG may end up with higher market value thanks to this decision, but it has definitely become morally bankrupt, leaving behind just the shell of a company who could otherwise be a champion in the fight toward digital freedom.

 

[Lumstar]

Give one example

At the federal level, the US has never overtly censored a video game.
But government action has had significant impact on the business. Primarily how the ESRB was established under pressure.

 

[raxadian]

At the federal level, the US has never overtly censored a video game.
But government action has had significant impact on the business. Primarily how the ESRB was established under pressure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas

That game was recalled and censored so the rating could be lowered.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas

That game was recalled and censored so the rating could be lowered.

And the copies that still had the content on the disc that weren't sent back skyrocketed in value on eBay!

 

[raxadian]

And the copies that still had the content on the disc that weren't sent back skyrocketed in value on eBay!

And nowadays you can download pirate versions with the sex content included.

 

[Lumstar]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas

That game was recalled and censored so the rating could be lowered.

Yes, but not technically by the federal government.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

Yes, but not technically by the federal government.

By that sentiment, the government hasn't mandated masks on a single person in the US, either. They simply imposed the restriction on every single business to enforce it on their customers or face fines/shutdown.

Government loves using loopholes to get its way

 

[kidcharlemagne]

Can't they just remove the stupid poster from the game?

Is not like games getting stuff removed is new, look at the Nes version of Maniac Mansion.

The poster was removed almost immediately after it was discovered in February 2019, with the developers claiming that they were initially unaware of its presence. Even though it was removed, the game was still unable to be sold, and the Chinese publisher was shut down by the CCP for "endangering China's national security."

 

[Jackson Ferrell]

This is no different to modern day Western society, just a different topic. Who cares any more

 

[Bladexdsl]

welcome to china the land of communists and SNOWFLAKES

 

[Arras]

This whole thing makes no sense. Why would they announce it in the first place if they knew this was going to happen? Did the company go to CDPR, ask "can you publish our game" and they only found out about the chinese drama after they accepted? Do they do no background checks on these things? Either way, the reason for deciding not to go through with it is that China is extremely easy to anger and they stay angry for years. If they did start selling this game, there's a decent chance the entirety of GOG would be forced out of China. Turns out stakeholders get upset if you ditch a market that has over a billion people.

 

[osaka35]

Guess I'll just never buy GOG again.

 

[Lumstar]

By that sentiment, the government hasn't mandated masks on a single person in the US, either. They simply imposed the restriction on every single business to enforce it on their customers or face fines/shutdown.

Government loves using loopholes to get its way

Oooh, burn! I'm most definitely critical of the legislative side of the pandemic.

 

[BlueFox gui]

i want to know about the concerned gamer messages

 

[leon315]

Pretty Dumb if you ask me .............. especially after playing Cyberpunk Most of this week ...dildos everywhere ass eating posters ...... Jonny Silverhand having sex and worst of all .. posters saying pineapple on pizza is illegal ...........

Yep, pineapple pizza is Heresy!
pineapple pizza eaters should be sent Gulag.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

By that sentiment, the government hasn't mandated masks on a single person in the US, either. They simply imposed the restriction on every single business to enforce it on their customers or face fines/shutdown.

Government loves using loopholes to get its way

More like a lot of states (mostly ones with RINOs and Democrat governors) are taking advantage of a situation that may have been perceived by the general public to be scary earlier this year, but as things moved along, more and more people woke up and can't wait for things to get back to normal and not have to wear a mask agai-oh wait...

https://nypost.com/2020/11/15/social-distancing-masks-necessary-after-getting-vaccine-fauci/

Just like the TSAs only being "temporary" as well as income taxes only being "temporary" back when those were introduced...

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This whole thing makes no sense. Why would they announce it in the first place if they knew this was going to happen? Did the company go to CDPR, ask "can you publish our game" and they only found out about the chinese drama after they accepted? Do they do no background checks on these things? Either way, the reason for deciding not to go through with it is that China is extremely easy to anger and they stay angry for years. If they did start selling this game, there's a decent chance the entirety of GOG would be forced out of China. Turns out stakeholders get upset if you ditch a market that has over a billion people.

And I say, let them be angry. If anything, the censorship leads to the Streisand Effect; by someone shutting the other person down, they make people more curious as to what was being offered in the first place. And this doesn't just apply to video games, either; lots of people were drawn to Jordan Peterson after his comments about the Canadian government and its progress towards a more authoritarian government had all of the usual suspects on the left side of politics calling him every -ist, -ism, and -phobic word in the book. It's like Freud's theory of repression; the more you repress the Id, the more it resides in people's unconscious mind even with an Ego balancing out both it and the Superego.

 

[FAST6191]

No business or corporation is your friend. That doesn't change the fact that there's still no platform which allows for resale of "used" digital games, movies, or music. Not Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Amazon, Apple...not a single one. So your choice to always single out Steam when complaining about this is rather odd, to say the least.

Steam have some very notable comments on the matter over the years, and some utter nonsense in it as well (my favourite being when they likened second hand games to used products nobody would want, as though as it was not code).

Not just "oh our hands are tied (in a market we own) by the publishers" but active opposition and dismissal of the concept.
I will equally call any business, lobbying group or government that seeks to block it a bunch of cunts.

Equally I never said my friend; I said on my side. Now it might (read probably will) be a matter of self serving convenience that sees them on my side and I will try to recognise when that is the case.

As far as attacking them. I am not a fan of monopolies and disproportionate control, they were also being put forward for consideration in the quoted post.

Overall they have been very strong in their anti-censorship actions, and basically created a market for games with strong sexual content in the West, which before was secluded in dinky little publisher websites even though there was appetite in the market for them.

Only after they got called out hard, made some seriously suspect calls (them yanking Hatred spoke to something there), and more or less considered it a cheaper business decision to do it (enforcement is hard after all). It was no great commitment to artistic free expression that saw them do it.

Equally I don't know that I would credit them with creating a market. It existed for many years (see the guy game for one, though strong might be debatable there, and there are instances going back year on year before then) and I would probably say their rise to monopoly/only real game in town raising a whole bunch of games up to "more than my website and a few forums somewhere" to either more financially viable or prominent had more to do with things there.

 

[leon315]

Guys can't find the ingame "culprit" image, anyone has it?can you post it here?

 

[MarkDarkness]

Only after they got called out hard, made some seriously suspect calls (them yanking Hatred spoke to something there), and more or less considered it a cheaper business decision to do it (enforcement is hard after all). It was no great commitment to artistic free expression that saw them do it.

Equally I don't know that I would credit them with creating a market. It existed for many years (see the guy game for one, though strong might be debatable there, and there are instances going back year on year before then) and I would probably say their rise to monopoly/only real game in town raising a whole bunch of games up to "more than my website and a few forums somewhere" to either more financially viable or prominent had more to do with things there.

As somebody who runs a business IRL, it still find it a very risky move. The possibilities of them receiving massive backlash or something unexpected harming them was real. They could also end up in some Facebook situation in which updates trickle down so slowly that they only make the problem worse. Instead, they overhauled their entire content filtering system in like a month and rolled it out to great success, and now people can buy their porn games if they want from the developers instead of relying on shady patches that require locale emulation on Windows and such. To me that is value generation.

 

[gamesquest1]

cant help but feel like they weren't expecting the cyberpunk controversies to actually get a foothold as strong as they did, they probably thought they could ride out the decision im guess they had decided they had the balls to weather the storm, but then after the cyberpunk mess they were possibly already feeling like the ground was shaky and decided to not take any further risks atm

honestly though I was all for buying cyberpunk 2077 on GOG once I knew I had the free time to play it, but now I would definitely think twice about it, if they would just be truthful and said "yeah pooh threatened us and we shat ourselves" fair enough, but to try bullshit everyone and pretend they did this for anyone but pooh himself is an insult to the intelligence of your entire userbase, don't hand me a bag of bullshit and tell me its a bag of chocolate.